The Union Government is facing liquidity problem, feel many senior officers in the State. This question is being raised as the State is yet to receive funds following the announcement of a grant of Rs 1,000 crore made by the Prime Minister on November 9 for rehabilitation and reconstruction works after the Phailin and floods.
This never happened earlier as after the Prime Minister’s announcement the Centre used to release funds within a day or two, said a senior State Government official.
So, On Saturday, the Department of Finance decided to release funds from the Odisha Contingency Fund (OCF) for the relief and reconstruction works to be taken up by various district authorities and departments.
In the meantime, the State Government has hiked the corpus of the OCF from a meagre Rs 400 crore to Rs 1,900 crore, keeping the requirement of the districts and departments in view.
Apprehensions of a liquidity crunch being faced by the Centre are felt by the State Government with the less funds inflow from the Union Government during this fiscal.
While the State Government is expecting Rs 10, 965 crore from the Centre in terms of grant, till the end of September this year it has received only Rs 3,094.42 crore, which is less 3.54 per cent in comparison to the last year’s corresponding period.
By September 2012, the State Government had received Rs 3,208.13 crore of grants from the Centre, but this year the inflow has slowed down, said a senior Finance Department officer.This would cause a lot of trouble for the State Government as it would hamper the developmental projects being undertaken with Central grants, said the officer.